


Last Call For Sin

by UniverseOnHerShoulders



Series: Prompt Fills [50]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/F, Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-14
Updated: 2019-12-14
Packaged: 2021-02-18 01:56:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21503374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UniverseOnHerShoulders/pseuds/UniverseOnHerShoulders
Summary: When the Doctor disappears from within the heart of the TARDIS, the team are at a loss... until a Time Lady in a purple frock rocks up, claiming to be the answer to all their problems.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor & Yasmin Khan & Graham O'Brien & Ryan Sinclair, Thirteenth Doctor/Missy
Series: Prompt Fills [50]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/585397
Comments: 2
Kudos: 138





	Last Call For Sin

**Author's Note:**

> From the prompt:
> 
> _13 is in danger and Team TARDIS has no idea what to do or even how to find her. In comes Missy to lead the gang. If she's friends with the Doctor and wants to help her, surely she's not that bad. Right?_

“This isn’t like the Doctor,” Yaz argues for the tenth time in as many minutes, folding her arms stubbornly across her chest as Graham shakes his head with vehement fervour. “She wouldn’t just go off and leave us here without telling us where she was going! That’s not like her; she’d know that we’d worry or something.”

“I mean… wandering off is kind of her MO,” Ryan notes, and Yaz resists the urge to issue a scathing retort. It’s been like this since the argument began; neither he nor Graham want to admit that the situation is unusual, and no amount of reasoning seems to be able to convince them otherwise.

Because yeah, alright, the Doctor’s MO _is_ to wander off without warning; _is_ to leave them to their own devices; _is_ to vanish without a trace and turn up somewhere else entirely, like a particularly celebrated magician or escape artist. But as Yaz has been arguing, the Doctor doesn’t usually do any of those things in the TARDIS, and she certainly doesn’t do it when they’re not on an adventure, which they are definitely not; far from it. They’d all been relaxing in the swimming pool, teasing Graham about his brightly-patterned swim shorts, and then without warning, like a panicked parent, Yaz had asked the fatal question:

“Wait, where’s the Doctor?”

She’d been there with them, undressed to her t-shirt and baggy swim shorts that were the precise shade of her usual trousers, splashing about happily and trying to instigate water fights. She’d been chatting and laughing and joking, and then they’d started talking about the Sheffield Christmas lights, and the momentary lapse in their collective concentration seemed to have been enough for the Doctor to… well, who knew?

This isn’t normal. Yaz knows it isn’t normal; wants to scream it at Graham and Ryan, but knows that won’t get her anywhere. So she sighs, and settles back on her haunches in her towel, and commits herself to battling with them for the next… well, however long it takes to get them to see things from her point of view, which could potentially be years.

She’s on the verge of speaking again when there’s the sound, somewhere in the distance, of a bell ringing.

No, not ringing.

Tolling. She knows the difference somehow; there’s a deep, instinctive part of her that knows the difference, and that part of her knows that the sound is frightening.

“What’s that?” Ryan asks nervously, wrapping his towel dressing gown around himself all the more tightly. “What does that mean?”

“It doesn’t sound good,” Graham acquiesces, and they both exchange laden glances that Yaz battles to ignore. “Maybe we should ah… get changed and meet back in the console room.”

Yaz resists the urge to roll her eyes, but she all but sprints back to her bedroom, nonetheless, stripping out of her wet swimsuit and leaving it in a damp pile on the floor as she half-stumbles into dry clothes and then hares it out of the room and back towards the beating heart of the ship.

Ryan and Graham appear minutes later, both of them ambling along as it isn’t a pressing concern that the ominous bell is still tolling its campanological warning.

“Are you willing to admit now that maybe, that bell signals that something bad has happened to the Doctor?” she asks with a scowl, planting her hands on her hips and trying to look intimidating. “Or not?”

“I mean,” Ryan chews his lip uncertainly. “It’s just a bell, innit…”

“It’s ominous sounding, I’ll give Yaz that,” Graham mutters, seeming to acquiesce to Yaz’s fury. “I’m starting to think you’re right, Yaz.”

“Oh, _finally_ ,” Yaz raises her eyebrows. “Now you want to listen to me.”

“Look, it’s not…”

The doors to the TARDIS are kicked in with considerable force, and a high, female Scottish voice trills:

“Nobody panic, lovies! I’m here to help!”

The three of them freeze as a woman in a Mary Poppins outfit in a particularly strange shade of purplish-brown strides into the centre of the room, looks around at them with an amused expression, and sets down an honest-to-god carpet bag at her feet. She removes a small, flat hat with red berries on it from atop a pinned-up mass of hair, and frisbees it onto a nearby coat rack, where it lands perfectly, then turns her attention back to the three of them.

“I know what you’re thinking,” she coos, giving them a twirl. “And I absolutely did it before PL Travers. That bitch has so many copyright notices coming her way, she won’t know what hit her.”

“I…” Yaz blinks hard, snapping into police-mode in the face of this disconcerting stranger. “Sorry, madam, who are you?”

“Oh, ‘madam’,” the woman claps her hands to her chest with theatrical flair, feigning a swoon. “I like this one very much. Aren’t you polite, poppet?”

Yaz stares back at her with icy bemusement, loathing the use of the patronising pet name.

“I’m Missy,” the stranger says, removing her hands from her chest and dropping into a curtsy so low that Yaz is concerned her nose might actually hit the floor. “Time Lady extraordinaire.”

“Aren’t you the Doctor’s enemy?” Ryan asks, with a staggering lack of tact that makes Yaz want to punch him in the arm. Or the face. Whichever. “She definitely mentioned something about you trying to blow her up, and trying to blow up the world.”

“It’s sort of our texting, dear,” Missy says with a simpering little pout, tipping him a wink laden with hidden meaning that Yaz doesn’t want to read into. “We’ve been at it for ages. It’s how I show affection. And she comes along and stops me, and then we have – well, I can’t tell you that, can I? You’re all children.”

“I’m sixty-one,” Graham says with indignation, apparently not catching her drift. “These two might be young’uns, but I’m not exactly a spring chicken.”

“Oh, bless you,” Missy cocks her head to the side. “Such a wee one. Sixty-one… why, when I was sixty-one, I was still blowing up Shobogans for funsies. The Doctor got awfully offended about that; they were always so protective of their pets. They reported me to the Council, and they put me in prison for a couple of decades. It would’ve been dull, but it was so _laughably_ easy to break out, and Thete and I used to-”

“Look, what are you doing here?” Ryan asks, cutting her off. “And how did you get in?”

“I asked nicely,” Missy dusts herself down smugly, before giving a nearby column a fond pat. “The TARDIS has always liked me.”

The console beeps loudly in what might be a denial. It’s hard to tell, given that the ship isn’t capable of actual words. Or maybe it is; Yaz tries not to think about that. She’s not entirely sure she’d like to know what its seen, or what its thoughts of those things are.

“And I’m very fond of her, although not with this _nasty Cloister Bell clanging_ ,” Missy holds a device in the air and the bell ceases to toll at once. “Much better.”

“Sonic?” Graham asks, at the same instant that Yaz asks: “Cloister Bell?”

“No, darlings, it’s a laser screwdriver. Much sexier,” Missy twirls the device like a baton and then tucks it into her cleavage with another lascivious wink. “And yes, the Cloister Bell. That irritating noise. What’s the ship trying to say to me, I wonder? Who knows, I don’t speak bell. Or don’t I? Actually-”

“What’s a Cloister Bell?” Yaz presses.

“A bell,” Missy enunciates slowly, as though speaking to someone particularly thick. “From a cloister.”

“I know that,” Yaz snaps, loathing the condescension dripping from Missy’s every word. “What does it mean though?”

“In this instance, it means bad things. The biggest, baddest, worstest things. It only really goes off when the ship is in danger – or the Doctor. Speaking of which, where is your keeper?”

“She ain’t our keeper,” Ryan says with a scowl, shoving his hands in his pockets. “And we were hoping you’d know where she was, since she vanished.”

“Vanished?” Missy arches an eyebrow. “What do you mean, vanished?”

“She was there, and we were all talking, and then she… wasn’t there,” Yaz explains. “We don’t know where she’s gone, or why, or how.”

“Well, I suppose today is your lucky day, isn’t it?” Missy beams, apparently enlivened by the prospect of… well, showing off. “I can help you to get her back, but you’re going to have to trust me.”

“Urm,” Graham frowns. “Haven’t you committed genocide a few times?”

“Only about eight,” Missy yawns. “I lost track, honestly. Thete probably knows; we can ask her when we get her back. Any other questions?”

“Aren’t you like, really evil?” Ryan asks with characteristic bluntness, and Yaz feels a begrudging sense of respect for him. He’s either really tactless or really brave; possibly both.

“Queen of it, yes.”

“And-” Yaz begins, but Missy scowls at her darkly.

“Do you want my help, or do you want to be stuck in the Time Vortex forever?” she barks, and the three of them exchange a guilty look. “The Doctor is my friend. The last remaining person like me in the entire universe. Do you really think I want her to be lost?”

“No,” the three of them mumble as one.

“Good. So, we’d best get on with it then, hadn’t we?”

* * *

The Doctor is sat shivering in the console room, her hair frozen into rapidly-thawing icicles that clatter tunefully as she moves her head from side to side, taking them all in. She’s wrapped in a heap of blankets and several towels, and there’s an unhealthy blue tinge to her skin that appears to be fading now that she’s back in the warmth, but she’s smiling gratefully at the three humans and one Time Lady in front of her.

“H-h-h-how’d you f-f-f-find m-m-me?” she manages to ask, and Yaz wraps another blanket around her shoulders, smoothing it out with care.

“I had a hunch you might need me,” Missy says casually, examining her nails with an air of spirited disinterest that Yaz could see through as easily as glass. “And these three employed my services.”

“Reluctantly,” Ryan adds, as though for posterity’s sake. “She _did_ find you though, didn’t she? So, she can’t be all bad.”

“I keep warning you about the Type 40,” Missy sighs and rolls her eyes. “Those malfunctioning air conditioning units can be lethal. What if your pets had got sucked into the Tundra Room? They’re not as robust as you; they’d have perished in minutes.”

“I-I-I-I’ll s-s-sort it,” the Doctor promises, nodding her head decisively and dislodging a shower of water droplets from her melting hair. “And they’re n-n-not pets.”

Missy seems to be on the verge of making a sarcastic retort when the Doctor breaks into a spate of agonised coughing, and her expression softens. “Would you like a cup of tea?” she asks with uncharacteristic gentleness, and the Doctor nods.

“Well then,” the Time Lady hums, turning to Yaz, Ryan and Graham. “Five cups of tea. Pronto.”


End file.
